The Right Reasons

In today’s shidduch system, FFBs are usually set up with FFBs, and BTs with BTs. This approach makes sense, says Rebbetzin Lea Feldman, who served as one of Neve Yerushalayim’s shadchaniyos for decades. When a couple comes from a similar background, they generally find it easier to understand each other. Yet a “mixed” marriage can be fine if the couple marries for the right reasons, she adds.

“If a person raised in a frum home marries a baal teshuvah because he or she wants to escape certain family problems, it can be a big danger,” Rebbetzin Feldman explains. “But if they’re doing it because they love the fire for Yiddishkeit, the excitement, the love for Hashem that baalei teshuvah often personify, it can be a wonderful shidduch. If there’s admiration and appreciation for where the other person is coming from, it’s wonderful.”

Seeking a life infused with meaning and truth — rather than the humdrum, lukewarm Judaism she’d been raised with — is what initially attracted Chani to her husband-to-be. “As a teenager, I was always questioning, always looking for something more authentic,” she says. “When I met someone with the same desire to search for emes, I was hooked. I wanted someone who would talk Torah at the Shabbos table, someone for whom ahavas Hashem and yiras Hashem were a part of his everyday conversation. I wanted someone whose Yiddishkeit was a real part of his life.”

For Leah, an FFB, it wasn’t much of a stretch to date a baal teshuvah. In fact, it was something that her mother even encouraged her to do. “My parents were baalei teshuvah, so to me it was 100 percent okay,” she says. “I have a lot of respect for where my parents are coming from. My husband is very balanced. When people meet him, they don’t always realize he’s a baal teshuvah. I appreciate the healthiness and balance he exudes, along with his love for Torah.”

Sometimes, a girl will look for a shidduch outside of her own circle because she’s interested in someone a little more open-minded than the average bochur. “If her parents realize that this is what’s best for her, and they find a boy who’s gone through the ranks in a baal teshuvah yeshivah and grown tremendously, I’d definitely encourage the shidduch,” says Rabbi Yosef Brown, a longtime seminary teacher in Eretz Yisrael.

It can be scary to go against the norm, yet taking the plunge has priceless payoffs. At 26, Penina was suggested her baal teshuvah husband by a community rav who knew them both well. “I was a bit nervous about it,” she admits, “but since the rav knew both of us, I agreed to try it, and I’m glad I did. Being married to a baal teshuvah has really stretched my mind. My husband has an openness to learning things from the source,” she says, by way of an example. “Sometimes we’ll come across something that I’ve done my whole life, but he’ll show me that there’s a better way of doing it.”

Bridging the Gap

If you take a man who learned the alef beis at age 20 and pair him with a woman who learned to read Hebrew fluently in elementary school, you’re likely to face some respect issues. “If the wife constantly finds herself correcting the husband, she can lose her respect for him,” notes Rabbi Binyomin Adilman, a marriage therapist in Yerushalayim.

“When we first got married, I did know more than my husband, but I tried not to say anything,” admits Chani. “I let him learn what to do in yeshivah. I knew I was his wife, not his rebbi or mashgiach. By now, though, he’s caught up. The things that took me a lifetime to learn, he’s learned in less than five years, which is really amazing if you think about it.”

Catching up on basic Torah knowledge — such as halachah, Chumash, and even Gemara — can sometimes be easier than developing deep-rooted Torah values. “You can’t make up 20 years of good chinuch in three years,” acknowledges Penina, whose husband learned in kollel for two and a half years after they married. “I have to stay open-minded — sometimes he’s just not aware. But as I spend less time learning because I’m working, and he spends more time learning, it evens out.”

There can also be advantages to this education gap, says Sari, who grew up in a Modern Orthodox home and married a baal teshuvah after seminary. “My husband learned all these Jewish concepts at an adult age, whereas I feel like I still have a kindergarten view of things. He gives me the depth that I don’t have, and I bring in a broader perspective from having grown up with it. It’s a great combination for our kids.”

For a “mixed” couple, the past also has the potential to become an issue. “Can you accept what your baal teshuvah husband might have done with his life before he became frum?” asks Rebbetzin Feldman. “If the answer is yes, you’ll be able to respect him even 50 years from now. If not, it will definitely become a problem.”

When the wife is the baalas teshuvah, you need to be even more cautious, asserts Rebbetzin Feldman. “Then you can run into a situation of different expectations for each other. For example, a baalas teshuvah might have a harder time with being in the home all the time. She might not understand how important the atmosphere in the home is to her husband. These are small things, but sometimes they make all the difference.”

For Rachel, a baalas teshuvah who married an FFB, the “expectations” issue was centered around the division of labor in the house. “I was raised in a feminist society where there was no such thing as a man’s job or a woman’s job,” Rachel explains. “My husband, Naftali, on the other hand, was raised in a home where the boys didn’t lift a finger. It’s not natural for him to pitch in with the housework, while it’s so ingrained in me that he should.”

A sophisticated college graduate, Rachel had been shomer Shabbos for several years when she became close to a family that was instrumental in a relative’s journey to Yiddishkeit. One of the family’s daughters suggested that she date her brother, who was looking for someone slightly out of the box. Despite a several-year age difference, Rachel agreed to the date, and within six weeks she and Naftali were engaged.

“There are definitely advantages to marrying a guy raised in a frum home,” Rachel says candidly. “He knows Hebrew, he knows davening, he could read the megillah for me when I gave birth three days before Purim. Many baalei teshuvah spend their whole lives trying to see if they’re frum enough, and he doesn’t have to deal with that. My husband is very confident in who he is and what his minhagim are.

“But it’s not always easy, either,” Rachel continues. “I grew up in this secular mentality of getting educated, getting a job. At 25, you should have already finished your degree, made your life choices. He never thought about the future until now, when the future’s already here.”

Yet Rachel admits that, as a result of being married to her husband, “I’ve gained a lot of emunah, a lot of deepening of religion, a lot of naturalness I didn’t have before. There are many things that are second nature for my husband that I have to work to make second nature for me. When you’re a baal teshuvah, you need to figure out so many things for yourself. My husband doesn’t need to figure things out for himself — they’re ingrained in him,” says Rachel.

Family Matters

“I knew I needed to marry someone who didn’t trip over Kiddush,” says Yehudis. An intelligent baalas teshuvah who’d been frum for several years before she began dating, Yehudis was looking for a husband who valued his Yiddishkeit, yet knew more than she did.

But when she became engaged to her FFB husband and went to visit his parents, who happened to be Holocaust survivors, she was caught completely off guard. “I was jet-lagged and worn out, and they all began to babble to each other in Yiddish! I didn’t know what was flying.”

Yehudis and her husband had much to learn about each other’s families, but the adjustments turned out to be more cultural than religious. In general, her own non-frum family is respectful, so the issues that arise there are fairly insignificant. Still, “for my husband, it was definitely a learning experience, but he’s pretty understanding about it,” she says, adding that her “kids caught on pretty fast — Zeidy is frum, Grandma isn’t.”

Baalei teshuvah know all too well the complexities of dealing with nonreligious family, but for an FFB spouse, this can be an unwelcome surprise. “You need to discuss everything in advance,” says Rebbetzin Feldman. “Often the non-frum family is not very involved in the couple’s life, but when it comes to simchahs and visits, the couple needs to set boundaries. Are both sides willing to visit the non-frum family on a regular basis, even if it can’t be for Shabbos or Yom Tov? Will they allow the non-frum grandparents to take their children to the movies?” These are questions that need to be answered.

Chani, who spent the first seven years of her marriage in Eretz Yisrael, far from both sets of parents, claims this was the best thing for her marriage. “We had a chance to mold our identity separate from both families,” she explains.

“Now, we live very close to my in-laws, and the biggest issue is food. Parents and grandparents like to see you eat, even when they don’t keep kosher. They want to take my kids out for the day but what will they eat? I finally solved the problem by packing a lunch box for each of my children. They’re allowed to eat what’s in the lunch box, and nothing else. We visit my husband’s grandmother weekly, and I bring along pizza and paper plates. As long as we keep things simple, we’re fine.”

The two sets of parents can likewise encounter many sources of friction, but Rabbi Brown says that families who make an effort to get along can usually work things out. “If a person employs proper derech eretz, it shouldn’t make a difference that the other family is lacking knowledge or experience in Yiddishkeit.”

Middos are the main goal, Penina avers. “There are definitely challenges in getting along with my husband’s family, but my family presents challenges, too. And don’t forget that we present challenges for my in-laws, as well. Where we can go, where we can eat, when they can be in touch with us — it’s a whole new world for them. They have caught on to a certain degree, but there are always new things that come up, which can make them very frustrated.”

She adds that marrying her husband led her to become more aware of people outside her own community: “Learning to understand his family opened a whole new world to me, a world I’d never had exposure to before.”

Often, says Rabbi Adilman, the baal teshuvah spouse will gravitate toward the frum family … but not always. Having grown up in a small family, Rachel chafes at the demands her husband’s large family makes on her. “There’s always a simchah or something else going on. There’s no privacy. Whenever we need to make a decision, there are endless phone calls and family members offering their advice. My husband thinks a large family is great, but I find it overwhelming.”

When it comes to building one home — when you were raised with two different value systems — it helps to pick and choose: “Just because a person’s a baal teshuvah doesn’t mean his values are all krum, and that my values are all necessarily kosher,” asserts Chani. “We need to weigh each thing and see which belongs in our home and which doesn’t.”

“My husband is more likely to be makpid than I am,” she adds wryly. “He’ll find it easier to take the stricter opinion in halachah. He chose the more religious school in our community for our kids, and he prefers that they don’t watch secular children’s movies. I find it harder, because I’m less likely to question what I grew up with.”

Beyond navigating family differences, finding the right community can also be tricky for a “mixed” couple. “Fitting in can be a major challenge,” notes Rabbi Adilman. If the couple lives in a largely FFB community, the baal teshuvah may be conspicuous, to the embarrassment of his or her spouse. Or the baal teshuvah may prefer to associate with fellow newcomers to Yiddishkeit, leaving his or her spouse feeling out of place.

When the husband is the FFB, his position in society can ease the couple’s transition into communal life, says Yehudis. She finds that her husband’s status as an FFB helped her integrate into frum society more quickly than she would have otherwise. “Integration is very important, but it’s important not to lose your sense of self,” she adds.

Would FFBs like Penina or Chani have planned from the beginning to marry a baal teshuvah? Probably not. But they have no regrets. For Chani, the thrill of being married to a baal teshuvah doesn’t wane with time: “There’s a tremendous amount of real avodah and love for Hashem in my life.”

As for Penina, she says that as soon as she met her husband, she knew that it could work: “If a person fits you, he fits you, and all the details fall into place.”

Navigating the Differences

Advice for spouses — or a chassan and kallah — who come from different religious upbringings:

1. Be clear about what kind of home you’re trying to build before you get married. Don’t jump into something you’re not ready for, and don’t make assumptions about anything.
2. Stay away from an “us versus them” mentality, or discussing a “right way” and a “wrong way.” Your spouse may come from a different place, but he or she still has good values to bring to the marriage.
3. Appreciate the struggles that your spouse went through and the choices he or she has made. Don’t get caught up in the insignificant details.
4. Establish an identity separate from both sets of parents. Recognize the value in the relationship the baal teshuvah spouse built with the families who helped him or her become frum.
5. Develop a thick skin. Unfortunately, people may say inappropriate things about your choice of a spouse. Ignore them.
6. Maintain a relationship with a rav. Everyone needs direction, but a couple with different backgrounds needs extra guidance and wisdom.

(Originally Featured in XXX, Issue XXX)